A Résumé of My Thought | Hans Urs von Balthasar (Translated by Kelly Hamilton) | Ignatius Insight
"...
meeting Balthasar was for me the beginning of a lifelong friendship I
can only be thankful for. Never again have I found anyone with such a
comprehensive theological and humanistic education as Balthasar and de
Lubac, and I cannot even begin to say how much I owe to my encounter
with them." -- Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) was a Swiss theologian, considered
to
be
one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth
century.
Incredibly prolific and diverse, he wrote over one
hundred books and hundreds of articles. In this essay, first published
in 1988 in Communio,
the theological journal he helped found, and later in Hans
Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work (Communio Books/Ignatius
Press, 1991; edited by David L. Schindler), he offers an introduction
to his thought and writing.
Visit this IgnatiusInsight.com Author
Page for more about Balthasar's life and for a full listing of the sixty
volumes of his work translated and published by Ignatius Press.
When a man has published many large books, people
will ask themselves: What, fundamentally, did he want to say? If he is
a prolific novelist-for example Dickens or Dostoevsky-one would choose
one or another of his works without worrying oneself too much about all
of them as a whole. But for a philosopher or theologian it is totally
different. One wishes to touch the heart of his thought, because one presupposes
that such a heart must exist.
The question has often been asked of me by those disconcerted by the large
number of my books: Where must one start in order to understand you? I
am going to attempt to condense my many fragments "in a nutshell", as
the English say, as far as that can be done without too many betrayals.
The danger of such a compression consists in being too abstract. It is
necessary to amplify what follows with my biographical works on the one
hand (on the Fathers of the Church, on Karl Barth, Buber, Bernanos, Guardini,
Reinhold Schneider, and all the authors treated in the trilogy), with
the works on spirituality on the other hand (such as those on contemplative
prayer, on Christ, Mary and the Church), and finally, with the numerous
translations of the Fathers of the Church, of the theologians of the Middle
Ages, and of modern times. But here it is necessary to limit ourselves
to presenting a schema of the trilogy: Aesthetic, Dramatic, and Logic.
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